The tried homicide trial of the novel who allegedly repeatedly stabbed author Salman Rushdie at an upstate New York occasion two years in the past is lastly set to start out Tuesday.
The twice-delayed proceedings are scheduled to start with jury choice at 9:30 a.m. on the Chautauqua County Courthouse.
Prosecutors stated Rushdie, the writer of “Satanic Verses,” will take the stand towards his accused attacker Hadi Matar, 26, through the trial.
Matar, of New Jersey, allegedly knifed Rushdie at the very least 10 instances throughout a literary seminar on the Chautauqua Establishment in August 2022.
The 77-year-old novelist was left blind in a single eye and affected by nerve and liver harm.
The moderator for the occasion, Henry Reese, was additionally wounded within the assault.
“I don’t think he’s a very good person. I don’t like him,” Matar instructed The Publish about Rushdie in an unique jailhouse interview days after the vicious assault.
“He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”
Rushdie spent years in hiding after late Iranian supreme chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini put a $3 million bounty on his head in 1989 over “The Satanic Verses,” which Muslims believed disparaged the Prophet Mohammed, calling the e-book blasphemous.
Rushdie started rising from his self-imposed exile within the Nineteen Nineties, and has since appeared at talking engagements world wide — together with the upstate occasion.
Matar, who was born within the US and has twin Lebanese citizenship, insisted he allegedly acted alone and solely learn “like two pages” of the controversial Rushdie novel.
He’s additionally dealing with separate federal terrorism expenses in US District Courtroom in Buffalo, to which he has pleaded not responsible.
Previous to the assault on Rushdie, Matar allegedly took a bus to Buffalo and a Lyft to Chautauqua, the place he purchased a ticket to the occasion and slept exterior the venue the night time earlier than, The Guardian reported.
As Rushdie addressed the gang, Matar allegedly rushed the stage and stabbed the writer earlier than shocked onlookers subdued him and he was arrested by police.
Matar, who has been locked up with out bail, pleaded not responsible to the tried homicide and assault expenses. He beforehand turned down a plea deal for a 20-to-life state jail sentence, down from 25 years.
His trial on tried homicide and assault expenses has twice been delayed, most not too long ago in October when Matar’s lawyer sought to maneuver the trial to a different county.
The lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, argued the publicity across the high-profile case and the dearth of an Arab American neighborhood within the small upstate county meant his shopper wouldn’t get a good trial.
That transfer was denied, clearing the best way for the trial to start this week.
The proceedings are anticipated to final one month, with jury choice lasting about two weeks, prosecutors stated.
It’s not but clear when Rushdie will take the stand.
Rushdie in 2023 wrote concerning the near-fatal assault in a “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” and referred to as it “lucky” that he survived the assault.
“There is such a thing as PTSD, you know,” he instructed the New Yorker in his first interview after the assault. I’ve discovered it very, very troublesome to write down. I sit down to write down, and nothing occurs. I write, nevertheless it’s a mix of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the following day.”
